Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Ottawa, KS

Ottawa is the county seat of Franklin County in east-central Kansas, located on both banks of the Marais des Cygnes River.

Ottawa is named for the Ottawa tribe of Native Americans, on whose reservation the city was laid out; the word Ottawa itself means 'to trade.'

The Ottawa tribe donated 20,000 acres of its land to establish and fund a school for the education of Indian and non-Indian students alike — the gift that led to Ottawa University.

Ottawa was founded in 1865 and incorporated in 1866; the first non-Indian settler, J.C. Richmond, built his home at Walnut and First streets on March 31, 1864.

In 1867 the Ottawa tribe sold its remaining land in Kansas and removed to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma.

As of the 2020 census, Ottawa had a population of 12,625 people living in 5,095 households.

Ottawa University, a private Baptist university in the heart of the city, was established in 1865 as the outgrowth of Roger Williams University, which had been chartered in 1860.

Ottawa is also home to a branch campus of Neosho County Community College.

Ottawa's Plaza 1907 movie theater has been recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest operating purpose-built cinema.

Because it straddles the Marais des Cygnes River, Ottawa has a long history of flooding, a problem noted as far back as a major flood in 1844, twenty years before the city was founded.